Quakers in Gloucester: the First Fifty Years, 1655–1705' (Pp. 259– 293)
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From the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society Quakers in Gloucester: the first fifty years, 1655–1705’ (pp. 259– 293). by R. Lacock 2007, Vol. 125, 259-293 © The Society and the Author(s) 06_BGAS125_259-294 16/11/07 15:52 Page 259 Trans. Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 125 (2007), 259 –293 Quakers in Gloucester: the first fifty years, 1655–1705 By RICHARD LACOCK The Message of George Fox In the economic turmoil, political upheaval and religious confusion that characterized the closing years of Charles I’s reign, the future looked bleak. For some it seemed that the ‘end-time’ had come, and many were in despair. They desperately sought the salvation and communion with God which their own sense of sin seemed to deny them. 1 George Fox, a founding father of the Religious Society of Friends or Quaker movement, was one such person who could not find peace in the established Church nor in any of the separatist congregations. He was ‘a man of sorrows’ 2 until, in 1647, he experienced his religious enlightenment. He described his experience as follows: And when all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do, then, oh then, I heard a voice which said, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition”, and when I heard it my heart did leap for joy. 3 Having experienced the Light, a direct revelation of Christ, 4 it became Fox’s mission to ‘turn (all) people from the darkness to the Light’. 5 Early followers believed that Fox was returning to primitive Christianity and derived all his ideas from the Spirit of Christ. In reality few of these ideas were novel. They had already been expounded by others in the years before Fox began his mission. How much he absorbed consciously or subconsciously during his travels is open to conjecture. Fox’s teaching on the Divine Light and his ideas on those fit ‘to be Ministers of Christ’ 6 had been voiced earlier by Baptists, Antimonians and Seekers, 7 Familists (the Family of Love) and Grindletonians. 8 The same sects also shared Fox’s view that the leading of the Spirit or the Light took precedence over the letter of the Scriptures. 9 In this they were going beyond those Puritans who emphasized the authority of the Bible rather than that of the institutionalized Church. Fox rejected all outward sacramental rites unless they were of the Spirit and internal. So did Familists and Seekers. 10 1. M. Watts, The Dissenters (Oxford, 1978), p. 187. 2. G. Fox, Journal, ed. J. Nickalls (London, 1975), p. 10. 3. Ibid. p. 11. 4. Ibid. p. 143. 5. Ibid. p. 33 6. Ibid. p. 7. 7. Watts, The Dissenters, p. 189. 8. C. Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (Middlesex, 1987), p. 27. 9. Fox, Journal , p. 33. 10 . Watts, The Dissenters , p. 192. 06_BGAS125_259-294 16/11/07 15:52 Page 260 260 RICHARD LACOCK In refusing to take off their hats to ‘so called’ social superiors (hat honour), Quakers were adopting a Leveller practice, which the Lollards had kept before that. 11 In rejecting pagan names for the days and months they were following Baptists and others. 12 In refusing to pay tithes to ‘hireling priests’, they were not alone. There was strong resentment among the poor against paying taxes to privileged clergy. 13 Of the two well known characteristics of modern Quakerism – silent worship and the peace testimony – the former was common practice among the Seekers. When Camm and Audland first reached Bristol in 1654, they were received by Seekers who sought the Lord in silent prayer and fasting one day a week. 14 However, the peace testimony was developed among Quakers after 1660. Evidently Quakerism was polygenous. As early as 1646, before Quakerism, Thomas Edwards had written that ‘there was hardly now to be found in England any sect that is simple and pure and not mixed and compounded’. 15 No wonder that a contemporary saw Quakerism as ‘a Trojan Horse of all heresies’. 16 The Message Reaches Gloucester, 1655–1660 Fox began his missionary work in the Midlands and the North, where many Baptists, Seekers and Separatists were receptive to his message. The established Church was less welcoming. By the summer of 1654, when ‘the churches were settled in the North’, 17 the time had come to move south. Among the seventy preachers sent forth were Francis Howgill and Edward Burrough who went to London, Richard Hubberthorne and George Whitehead who travelled towards Norwich, and John Camm and John Audland who went through the counties to Bristol, where they were greeted by a large group of Seekers, and warmly received by the soldiers at the Royal Fort and the Broadmead Baptists. Of the latter about one quarter became Quakers. 18 From Bristol the word spread northwards to the textile workers of the Cotswolds. Once again there was a ready response. When Humphrey Smith visited Nailsworth in 1655, Seekers who had been meeting for some years were ‘mightily affected’. In the same year other Quaker preachers reached Painswick and Tewkesbury. 19 Although there is no date given for the account of the first Friends’ meeting in Gloucester, it was almost certainly in 1655. This is a reasonable assumption since the Quakers Margaret Newby and Elizabeth Cowart were in Gloucester on 15 November 1655 .20 The missioners Christopher Holder and Thomas Thurstone held the first recorded meeting in the house of Thomas Ridall. 21 Some time later Elizabeth Morgan of West Chester addressed a crowded meeting at Ridall’s house. 11 . A. Davies, The Quakers in English Society 1655–1725 (Oxford, 2000), p. 133. 12 . Ibid. p. 192. 13 . C. Hill, The Century of Revolution 1603–1714 (Nelson, London, 1964), p. 86. 14 . G. Marshall, Journal (London, 1844); W. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism (Cambridge, 1955), p. 165. 15 . T. Edwards, ‘Gangraena’, in A. Hughes (ed.), Seventeenth Century England: A Changing Culture I (London, 1980), p. 131. 16 . T. Price, The History and Method of His Majesty’s Happy Restoration, p. 31. 17 . Fox, Journal, p. 108. 18 . Braithwaite, Beginnings of Quakerism , pp. 165, 167, 170. 19 . N. Penney (ed.), The First Publishers of Truth (Headley Bros., London, 1907), pp. 106–7. 20 . G.F. Nuttall (ed.), Early Quaker Letters from Swarthmore MSS. to 1660 (Friends’ House, London, 1952), 1/359. 21 . Penney, First Publishers of Truth, pp. 109–10. 06_BGAS125_259-294 16/11/07 15:52 Page 261 QUAKERS IN GLOUCESTER 261 In the excitable climate of the time rumours began to spread that Thomas Ridall and John Edmunds, another early convert to Quakerism, had been bewitched – a precarious situation in an age when witchcraft was still a capital offence. Alderman Anthony Edwards became so concerned for his great friend Edmunds that he went to warn him of the dangers and persuade him to change his views. In this Edwards was unsuccessful, but Edmunds did admit that ‘the people were generally incensed against us. ‘They…scoff and throw stones’. 22 This inauspicious beginning reflects some of the hostility frequently encountered by the Quakers. Although Gloucester had been a garrison town and the army generally encouraged free thinking in religious matters, there is no record of the soldiers here receiving Quakerism with the enthusiasm shown by those in Bristol. 23 Perhaps more importantly the city had been degarrisoned in 1653 in order to reduce army costs. 24 Furthermore, although Gloucester was strongly Puritan, it was primarily Presbyterian, 25 and the Presbyterians did not welcome Quakers. Presbyterianism appealed to many clergy because it asserted the equality of the clergy, yet kept a clear distinction between them and the laity. There is some evidence of radical feeling prior to the Quakers. One incident was in November 1653 when Julian, wife of Abraham Moates, interrupted a service in the College, i.e. the then ‘disestablished’ cathedral church. She called upon the preacher to come down and cried out ‘Believe him not, he is a deluder of the people...’. 26 Although a dissenting voice in the city, she does not appear to have joined the Friends. The parliaments of 1648 and 1649 were relatively tolerant, 27 and Cromwell himself was sympathetic to Quakers, 28 but Quakers were increasingly seen as a threat to law, order and the established social system. They are first mentioned in the Council of State in 1654 when ways were considered to ‘suppress all tumultuous meetings on pretence of Quakers or otherwise’. 29 Previous legislation was then more strictly enforced. 30 Thus the Vagrancy Acts of Queen Elizabeth could easily be invoked against the itinerant preachers, who were essential in the spreading of ideas. 31 Quakers could also be caught under the Blasphemy Act of 1650 for refusing the oath – this time against Papal authority. Their adherence to Christ’s injunction to ‘swear not at all’ was not appreciated by nervous officials of the State or Church. Even when a justice was sympathetic, he could not flout the law. As Justice Overbury of Gloucestershire explained to Quakers, ‘If they believe it evil to swear, they ought not to do it’. Nevertheless, he was sworn to execute the law as it was and must therefore send them to prison. 32 Meanwhile, further south, in 1656 James Nayler unwisely allowed himself to make a triumphal entry into Bristol. Although intended as a sign of the second coming of Christ, the gesture was widely seen as blasphemous. Such conduct did nothing to reassure the more conservative parliament.